Meditation for Anxiety: A Beginner’s Guide

Many different types of meditation can be helpful for anxiety. You may want to try a few to find out which you like best. You can also use different techniques depending on how you feel in each moment:

• Mindfulness meditation: With this type of meditation, you focus on your breathing, feeling your chest rise and fall with your eyes closed. You may notice your thoughts and feelings without judging them as good or bad. Just let them float on.
• Guided meditation: You can download a meditation app or find videos online to guide you through a meditation practice. The narrator may ask you to think of somewhere relaxing and focus on the sights, sounds and smells of that peaceful place.
• Body scan: You can do this type of meditation on your own or with guidance. You may lie down with your eyes closed. Then, tense and relax muscles in one area before moving to the next and repeating the process until you’ve gone through your whole body.
• Mantra meditation: A mantra is a word or phrase that you think to yourself. In mantra meditation, when your mind begins to wander, you can go back to your mantra to focus again. You can think of how you want to feel and use those words as your mantra — like “peace” or a mantra word like “om.”
• Yoga, qigong and tai chi: If you want to move while you meditate, think about a physical practice like yoga, qigong or tai chi. While each of these differs, they all use breathing with slow, graceful postures to raise balance and focus.